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Global Worker Rights

We live and work in a global economy. As corporations spread their reach, and industries and sectors become increasingly linked, our fate as working people in the United States is bound up with the fate of working people across the world. Our brothers and sisters in other countries face many of the same challenges: a lack of fundamental labor rights, precarious work, poverty, income inequality and a push by business interests to drive down wages and working conditions.

The AFL-CIO believes that confronting these challenges requires building power for people around the world. We cultivate strong partnerships with unions and labor rights movements in other countries and develop joint strategies to improve protections for all working people, including multinational organizing campaigns and an economic agenda on trade, tax and development that puts human rights before private profit.

Working people share a common struggle that transcends borders, and it is only by acknowledging our shared humanity and working together that we can ensure fair and equitable treatment at home and throughout the world.

1,134

The number of Bangladeshi garment workers killed in the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse.

We could never have dreamed that we would find such warmth, interest and solidarity in the United States.
—Lydda Gonzalez, Honduran maquila worker

Did You Know

There are more than 21 million children, women and men living in forced labor.